Pages

Thursday, 17 December 2015

Particle fever (2014) is a fascinating documentary film that
follows six scientists working to see if the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
at CERN will produce evidence of the Higgs boson,
commonly referred to as the "God particle." Although safe for all
ages, the subject matter of Particle Fever makes this movie
most appropriate for high school students and older. The science presented is
top-notch, with complicated physics explained in language that everyone should
be able to understand.

Why am I writing
about this documentary in my CLIL blog today? Well, I reckon that this
documentary conveys in a superb way the passion of some researchers for Science
but also the honest attitudes one can adopt to grasp knowledge of our world.
Therefore, I would say that we can make use of this documentary in
several subjects: Technology, Maths, Physics, Philosophy or Citizenship. You
can follow the official trailer below these lines:

If you like the
proposal, let me just help a bit with some study questions. You
can find them here.

Monday, 7 December 2015

Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December. It
commemorates the day on which, in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly
adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.

Many years have passed and unfortunately there is still a
long way ahead to guarantee the fundamental freedoms and protect the human
rights of all. However, it also has to be said that there are many
organisms and individuals who are working hard to collaborate to protect human
rights. Today I would like to write about one of these individuals. Her name is
Benedetta Berti. She is a foreign policy and
security researcher, analyst, consultant, author and lecturer. Her work focuses
on human security and internal conflicts, as well as on post-conflict
stabilization/consolidation (specifically integration of armed groups,
democracy/governance and crisis management and prevention).

Today I would like to share one of her video lessons
to start analyzing the complexity of this issue with students. In less
than five minutes, Benedetta offers an accurate insight into the limits of the
current mechanisms that aim at protecting human rights. She also highlights the
need to update the existing mechanisms if we want to preserve human
rights in the current digital world we live in. Therefore, I reckon it would be worthwhile spending five
minutes on viewing the video above with students and I suggest fostering
students' discussion after viewing it. I hope you will find this
lesson plan useful.

My second proposal for classroom use is based on
"Blowing in the wind" by Bob Dylan. Composed in 1963, its
message is very much alive in 2015. The song includes a string of
provoking questions to make us aware of the fact that the largest cause of
human rights violations is mental disconnection from the reality that
affects others: "how many times can a man turn his head, and
pretend that he just doesn't see?"

You can find a simple activity to carry out while students
listen to the songhere.

Finally, I would like to suggest some other sources that
include plenty of resources for classroom use:

Wednesday, 18 November 2015

Prevention is
the 2015 theme of the International Day for the Elimination of
violence against women on 25 November
and of the UNiTE to End Violence against Women Campaign’s 16 days call for
action. You can see more at: www.unwomen.org. The United Nations
Secretary-General’s Campaign UNiTE to End Violence against Women invites you
to "Orange the world: end violence against women and girls". We have sixteen days (since
November 25th till December 10th) to collaborate by using the toolkit and sharing our photos,
messages and videos showing how we can orange our world atfacebook.com using #orangetheworld.

I would also like to tell you about www.plan-uk.org, a webpage with plenty of resources that you can use to raise students' awareness of the need to fight for a world in which girls and women can live safe from violence, go to school without fear, marry who they want and have their voices heard.

As I focus my councelling in school contexts and as most of my readers work in school contexts too, I have chosen a resource that fosters reflection on how violence against girls can take place in or around schools. You can find it here.

The following video can serve as a starting point:

My humble contribution to this campaign of prevention outlined above can very well include a song because I cannot agree more with Hans Christian Andersen when he said that "where words fail, music speaks". On this occasion, my choice is "Try", by American singer Colbie Caillat. I consider this is an empowering song because I believe that the best prevention starts by making young girls understand that they do not have to be someone else in order to make others happy. The lyrics convey this message very effectively. I hope your students will enjoy the song as much as I do. If you wish, you can carry out an activity on it.

Wednesday, 4 November 2015

The video above describes the cooperative learning technique called "Jigsaw reading" in a very clear way but below these lines you can find my description and reflection on the topic:

Defined broadly, Jigsaw is a grouping strategy in which the members of the class are organized into "jigsaw" groups. The students are then reorganized into "expert" groups containing one member from each jigsaw group. The members of the expert group work together to learn the material or solve the problem, then return to their "jigsaw" groups to share their learning. In this way, the work of the expert groups is quickly disseminated throughout the class, with each person taking responsibility for sharing a piece of the puzzle.

Let me suggest a simple way to carry out this technique:

- Divide the reading text into separate extracts and form student groups. The groups should be diverse in terms of ability.

- Form temporary expert groups in which students are assigned to the same extract. Give students in these expert groups time to discuss the main points of their segment and to rehearse the presentations they will make to their jigsaw group.

- Then bring the students into jigsaw groups that are composed of one student from each expert group. Have each student present her or his extract to the group. At the end of the session, you may give a quiz so that students are held accountable for learning all the material.

The teacher's role in the jigsaw is to facilitate learning. When students are in expert groups, the teacher can support students by encouraging them to find ways to put information they learned into their own words, to relate the material to their own lives, and to give examples that help them explain the material to their group. Students should be encouraged to help each other and to make sure everyone in their group understands the material and will be confident presenting it to his or her group.

How can we make use of this strategy in any content areas?. Here you can find an example for a Science class.

Wednesday, 21 October 2015

Cambridge University Press has just released a couple of books aimed at helping EFL students who are learning Physics and Chemistry through English to undertand the content of their subject courses and build the necessary English language skills for those contexts.
The book is made up of several units, each of which covers an area of Physics or Chemistry. As for the areas of English language covered in these books, they have been selected for their relevance to understanding and discussing the content areas of Physics and Chemistry.

I am sure the publications above will be of great help for those of you teaching Physics and Chemistry through English. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Breakthrough to CLIL team on their great work.

Friday, 9 October 2015

Last August I read that Wildwood IB World Magnet Schooluses the
inquiry-based model to put students in charge of their learning. This model is based on lessons that stem from student questions and harness the power of curiosity so I asked
myself: why don't we try doing the same in our CLIL contexts? Why not in every
content area? When you watch the video above, I am sure you will agree that the model has to be effective if a teacher utters a sentence as powerful as the following one: "All of a sudden, we see our students doing things that really matter to them and they're excited and they're passionate and they want to talk about what they're learning".How can we create a culture of enquiry? First of all, we need to create the
atmosphere that allows students to askcomfortably.If
students don’t feel welcome in the classroom, they won't ask questions or
engage in the learning. This is a great step in the right direction but
it may not be enough because many students need support in asking questions and
creating different kinds of questions for different situations. In order to
fulfill this goal, teachers should use a variety of strategies, such as
structured protocols and question starters to support students in asking
effective questions.

At this point I would like
to recommend a great book by Wiggins and McTighe:" Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student
Understanding". You can read a very interesting extract
from the bookhere which includes essential questions organized by areas.

You can also facilitate your students' inquiry-based learning through some ready-to-use tools for the classroom. I reckon you will like this tool provided by www.edutopia.org. (It also includes a task on note-taking and another one on vocabulary).

On October 13th we will meet for our first seminar session and I will try and spend some time on this engaging issue of "inquiry-based learning" and its usefulness in our CLIL classrooms.

Monday, 21 September 2015

September the 26th is the European Day of Languages. The Council of Europe and the European Union (EU) created the day on the 6th of December 2001. Its main aim is to encourage language learning across Europe. All Europeans are encouraged to take up a new language. The founders of this day also hope those responsible for providing access to language learning are encouraged to make it easier for people to learn languages.

I would personally like to take the opportunity this blog offers me to encourage all of you who teach different languages to raise awareness among your students about the privilege they share as citizens of a continent that displays such linguistic and cultural diversity as Europe does.

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

The Bulgarian English Teachers' Association held a Conference in Sofia on June 6th 2015 and Keith Kelly developed a very clarifying workshop on 'CLIL for ELTs'. Throughout our seminar sessions we have been talking about the need to provide students who are learning an area through English with the language support which will enable them to understand the content as well as to write about it or prepare an oral presentation on it. You will find a very clear example of how to support students with the required language on Heredity. As you run through the slides, you will also witness how groups of students carry out project based learning in Science classes. There are different examples for young learners but I like one that shows a a group of very young learners working on "Let's launch a rocket together" and we can see how they have a great time while they learn content related to rocket design and use the language they need (nouns, action verbs and the language of comparison).The slides also include very interesting "product" projects, one of which I highly recommend for Chemistry teachers: Chemistry as a Cultural Enterprise. Here you will be able to take part in School partnership projects and/or see the projects that have already been completed. I also reckon that Chemistry teachers are bound to find the "Publications" and "News" sections really interesting.

One of the last slides includes some essential references for those teachers who implement different areas at Primary and Secondary levels through English , such as the Forum for across the Curriculum Teaching and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council website. The section called "News, events and publications" will open a door to a great deal of news that can add an element of motivation to your classes. There are clearly written texts and in some cases there is a video and even the video transcript itself. If you enter here, you will find a nice example: "How do we choose the food we eat?"

Therefore, I would like to thank Keith Kelly for sharing this workshop with all of us. You can follow it below these lines:

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

Next Tuesday May 26th we will have our last seminar session together. It will also be the second session in which teachers from different curriculum areas will present part of their work to the rest of the group. I am sure all of us (18 teachers in the group at the moment of writing these lines) will gain a considerable amount of knowledge next Tuesday as we did in the previous session. Right now it is truly difficult for me to choose a topic among the many that make up "the universe of CLIL" and write a final post on it. Therefore, I will just t list the main topics we have developed since October so that all of you can check that your folders are filled up with every topic in this list and next Tuesday we will decide on seminar session priorities for our CLIL classes.

This is the list of topics we have covered since October 2014 till May 2015:

- What is CLIL? What makes it so motivating for students? What makes it different from traditional bilingual instruction?

- Planning a CLIL unit

- Support for CLIL learners

- Interrelation between Content and Language: successful ways to do it

- A deep analysis of BICS and CALPS in CLIL contexts

- Vocabulary instruction in CLIL contexts

- The most useful ICT resources for subjects taught through English

- Assessment and evaluation in CLIL classrooms

Check that you have the whole pack and ask me if you missed any of the resources for each of the topics above.

I will finish with a recommendation: Cambridge webinar on Supporting Primary and Secondary teachers in CLIL contexts. You can access the slides from here and you can follow the webinar below these lines:

Thursday, 16 April 2015

Jason Skeet , NILE training consultant, delivered a very interesting on-line webinar on Feedback and Assesment in CLIL on April 2nd. Skeet is an experienced consultant and trainer in CLIL at Utrecht University and has provided advice and training for bilingual schools throughout The Netherlands. If you could not attend this webinar, now you can listen to the complete recording here. The ppt slides that he used can be found here. I reckon they offer a very clarifying insight into the complex issue of Feedback and Assessment in CLIL.

There is no doubt that any educator needs to adjust his/her teaching taking assessment into account and as CLIL practitioners, in the teaching and learning
process, we should focus not only on content, and not only
on language. Each is interwoven, even if the emphasis is
greater on one or the other at a given time. All this should be considered when facing assessment.

Next seminar session we will tackle this challenging issue. Our focuswill be placed on looking at practical suggestions and ideas that can be applied in a CLIL classroom.

Apart from this, our session on April 21st will be the first of two sessions in which seminar members will present the work they have done on oral skills in content areas, written presentations, other activities that have proved to be truly successful and personal sites where diverse CLIL units have been uploaded.

Sunday, 22 March 2015

World Water Day is March 22nd — a day when the world turns its attention towards the 750 million people who lack access to safe water. From these lines, I would like to contribute to raising awareness of the importance of this issue among our students.

The following video can be a nice starting point:

The British Council website offers a very complete range of activities that you can carry out after watching the video. You can access them here. You will find both on-line ("check for understanding: multiple choice and gap fil") and off-line activities ("worksheets and downloads").

Really moving stories that describe the drama millions of people are going through can be found on water.org. Since co-founded by Matt Damon and Gary White in in 1990, water.org has helped hundreds of communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean gain access to safe water and sanitation.

You can also make students listen to the following interview with Matt Damon about the water crisis in 2010:

A wide variety of resources is offered by the United Nations website. Logos and posters in many different languages can be downloaded from here.

Finally, a very practical ready-to-print lesson plan is offered, as usual, by ESL Holiday Lessons. You can work on this plan and students are bound to learn lots of language while they also get a glimpse of the crisis affecting one of the most precious resources we possess.

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

20 years have passed since 17,000 participants and 30,000 activists streamed into Beijing for the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995.They were remarkably diverse, coming from around the globe, but they had a single purpose in mind: gender equality and the empowerment of all women, everywhere. By the time the conference closed, it had produced theBeijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights. As a defining framework for change, the Platform for Action made comprehensive commitments under 12 critical areas of concern. Even 20 years later, it remains a powerful source of guidance and inspiration.

The following video can be an excellent introduction to a series of sessions to celebrate International Women's Day 2015:

After viewing this video, you can proceed with a text on International Women's Day and some activities on it. Choose the ones that best fit your school context from the lesson plan you can get here.

If you have the chance to spend some sessions on the topic, this is a nice webquest on "Important women in the world". It is aimed at making students aware of the important work different women belonging to different work areas have carried out. You can adapt it and include other women if you think other choices may be more successful with your students.

For those of you who share my passion for music as a means to create the proper atmosphere and convey powerful messages, I have two proposals: the first one is Gloria Gaynor's "I will survive". Even though it was released in 1978, it has remained a true pop music anthem that highlights women's strength. You can download the lyrics here and this is a worksheet you can use with your students.

My second proposal is "A woman's worth". This was Alicia Key's second single. In this song, she wrote about self-esteem, and being worthy of the kindness of others. Keys feels it can relate to a man or a woman so I reckon it is very suitable for our students because they can listen to a song that describes what good relations should be like.

The video was shot in Brooklyn, near where she grew up:

The lyrics of the song offer a great opportunity to convey the powerful message of relations based on respect and equality. Precisely because the message is so powerful, I decided to forget about grammar objectives such as the first conditional or modal verbs and to offer students some activities which would enable them to fully understand the meaning of words and sentences in the song. That's why I developed this worksheet.

I hope that the proposals above will contribute to step up our efforts to foster gender equality in our classes

Friday, 20 February 2015

A Webquest is an
inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that
learners work with comes from the web. The model was developed by Bernie Dodgeat San DiegoStateUniversity in February,
1995. Since then, thousands of teachers have embraced WebQuests as a way to make
good use of the internet while engaging their students in the kinds of thinking
that the 21st century requires.

Webquests promote high-level thinking, develop problem-solving skills, and
provide an avenue for seamlessly integrating technology into the curriculum.When coming to CLIL contexts, I would say that they add the following benefits:

- They are student-centered and there is true active learning involved.

- The teacher becomes a mere facilitator. (He/she will check that the resources and links provided are working before students start carrying out the tasks and will monitor the process. A good webquest includes teacher's notes to know what his/her role should be)

- They provide really meaningful contexts in which students are in contact with everyday language settings that are applicable to their lives.

- Interpersonal skills become essential throughout the process since the learning activities are based on projects and research development roles.

- Cooperative learning is a major characteristic of task-based projects.

- Culture is a core area and the other 3 Cs (content, communication and cognition) are also crucial elements in good webquests.

Our next seminar on March 17th will focus on how to choose adequate proposals for our CLIL contexts from the many available sites for teachers.

Right now I would just like to show you a couple of good examples: the first one I have chosen is a webquest on cloning which can be used in Science but also in Ethics. You can find it here.

During this Webquest,
students will be exposed to interactive expository texts that describe the
basics of cloning, the history of cloning and the controversial applications of
cloning. Students will simulate the procedure of laboratory cloning and they will also formulate an opinion on the ethics of cloning endangered/extinct
species. Thus, a wonderful extension for this Webquest could be a classroom
discussion/debate on the ethics of cloning endangered/extinct species

My second example deals with a very interesting topic: what really ended World War II, which could be useful for History teachers. This is the link to it.

This is an introductory post to the topic but I would like to finish by letting you know that next seminar session I will present lots of examples for your content areas and I will also suggest how to identify really good webquests.

Have a look at the following rubric so that you can start your own search for valid webquests if you wish. Last but not least, I am embedding a prezzi presentation by two professors that provides a very clear introduction to the topic:

Thursday, 5 February 2015

The role vocabulary plays in reading and
content area lessons is not the same. In fact, there are important differences between the two. For example, the words temerity
and fulcrum in a novel do not relate to each other. Therefore, understanding the meaning of one and not the other in
the book has little
impact on the readers’ comprehension of the entire text.

However, in a content area, words are
related to concepts and are often related among themselves. Take
for instance the
words atom,
neutrons, protons, nucleus and electrons. These words are necessary to know in order
to understand the concept of an electron cloud. Therefore, students need a thorough
understanding of content vocabulary because these words are labels for
important concepts. Acquisition of the meanings of these words is necessary in order to learn further
concepts.

Furthermore,
the word nucleus in Chemistry is
different from the word’s definition in Biology. This
is because each discipline has its own language or technical vocabulary that students must
learn in order to comprehend specific content-area information.

Another essential consideration is that content
vocabulary consists of many low-frequency words that do not appear in other contexts.

All the differences mentioned above leave no doubt that a different
approach to vocabulary instruction in content areas is needed, mainly one which enables students to integrate new terms with what they already know. Apart form this, vocabulary instruction in content areas has to ensure that new
terms are taught and retaught in
multiple contexts and allow students to use these new terms in ways that are meaningful to them as often as possible.

Content area teachers can get considerable help from language teachers if they provide them with information about the vocabulary strategies that work in their English language classes, so I suggest that English language teachers should carry out a simple survey among students so as to make them aware of the vocabulary strategies they are using and the need to use some they are still not familar with.

Experts on strategies that lead to effective acquisition of the subject-specific vocabulary have to be known by content area teachers: Keith Kelly provides us with excellent resources so as to work on vocabulary in Science and Geography in three different stages:

- Working with words

- Working with sentences

- Working with texts

For those of you who wish to have a bank of basic vocabulary strategies that can be used in any content area, this file can be very useful. I will try to show you how you can adapt them to your specific subjects in our next session together on February 10th.

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

The British Council web site has just published Julie Dearden's research on English as a medium of Instruction. Julie Dearden is the Senior Research and Development Fellow in English
as Medium of Instruction (EMI) at Oxford University Department of Education
(OUDE) and has a particular interest in the global shift from English being
taught as a ‘foreign’ language to English being used as a medium of instruction
for other academic subjects. She is a member of the OUDE Applied Linguistics
research group which aims to increase understanding of the acquisition and use
of language from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. Julie manages
a new research centre which was established in March 2014: EMI Oxford. This
centre conducts research into English as Medium of Instruction

The report is a bird's eye view or a snapshot of the views and
issues involved when implementing EMI. The report is based on a recent
worldwide survey conducted with British Council staff acting as informed
respondents and covers 55 countries, Spain included. The study was conducted from October 2013 to March 2014 and investigated the current situation of EMI in terms of country's particularities, subjects being taught through EMI and important variables according to educational phases.

I reckon this publication offers a deep insight into the crucial factors which influence effective EMI and essential implications for classroom contexts are accurately described. In short, a must-read for CLIL practitioners.

Thursday, 8 January 2015

A new year has just begun and I know that
all of us are eager to fill it in with new hopes, projects and illusion in our
personal and professional environments.

My humble contribution at the start of this year will be a lesson plan I
have developed for Secondary 3 and 4 level students on the topic of
Globalization.

Although this topic can be included both in Geography and
Citizenship content areas, I reckon that the proposal I offer might be
just an introduction to the topic in a Geography class but a complete
sequence in Citizenship.

CLIL practice is much more effective when
coordination between the language teacher and the subject teacher takes place
so this lesson plan would work much better if this coordination took place and
the English language teacher could present the basic vocabulary and language (mainly contrast clauses, language for
expressing opinions and language and
structure of an opinion essay)

In case coordination between the subject teacher and the English
language teacher is not possible, I have added some language support for
the students and for the subject teacher who might need it.

Regarding the focus on language, I have tried to choose some activities
that help students with differences that are basic in any content area and not
only in Citizenship or Geography: language that is used to express facts
versus language that is used to express opinions, language that shows
certainty and language that shows uncertainty; language that conveys caution; language
for generalizations; language for contrast.

You can read the whole lesson plan and find all handouts for you and for
the studentshere.

I hope you will find my proposal useful. We will talk about it in our
next seminar session together.